I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone to hear me say this place is astounding. It is at times beautiful, at times hilarious, and at times confusing — sometimes all three at once. And of course this was one of the places I really wanted to see in Barcelona, alongside the beach and… yeah, the beach and this were pretty much it. I’m not going to lie and say I’m knowledgeable about architecture, because I’m not — when I studied Art History in high school, my priorities were very clearly painting >>>>> architecture >>> sculpture — but when I first saw this complicated, towering creature of a church, my breath caught in my chest a little bit.

If you first see the Sagrada Familia in daylight, I think the effect might be lessened a little, because you see all the weird-ass shit at the same time as the glorious, intimidating gothic structure, or maybe it was seeing it at night first (no lights) that made it look less imposing in the sunshine. Either way, it is a lot. I hope I can make it back to Barcelona and go inside sometime.

As usual, I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves, as they’re far more eloquent than I could possibly be on this subject.

One of my goals for the new year was to take a picture every day. If you have a fancy camera you may be familiar with the situation — when you travel or do something fun it gets a ton of use, but then you’re home and you go transfer the photos and you realize you’ve shot two days in three months. I wanted to challenge myself to get better photos of everyday things, as well as find beauty in the common.

I did a fairly good job for sixteen days; on the sixteenth day, my camera made a whirring sound and said, “Error 99!” And that was that. I have now borrowed a Nikon camera from a friend, which should hold me over until I figure out what to do with my Canon. I’m waiting to hear whether it can be repaired at all, and how much it will cost me to do so. If all else fails, I can probably afford a 700D body. I’m telling myself it’s not the same as spending on a laptop that won’t last; it’s always good to have multiple camera bodies, so the 700D won’t be left in the dust whenever I have enough money to buy my dream 5D Mark — but it’s still money I wasn’t planning to spend.

What this means on a practical, blog-front level — I will hopefully have another fortnight in pictures for the middle of February, but I skipped three weeks. I still kept up with many other habits, so it’s all a work in progress and I’m not too fussed about it. I take plenty of photos — I’m a bit compulsive as a shooter — so there’s never much of an obvious gap. And here’s a summary of my January — at least the first half.

Today I bring to you a collection of photos I took at the parc del centre del Poblenou in Barcelona back in September. Annemari and I stayed at a hotel on the other end of Avinguda Diagonal from all the interesting stuff, and on our walk down to see the Sagrada Familia on Sunday, we took a detour because we, like flies, are attracted to shiny objects.

Much like the London Zoo, however, I have very little to say, and so I’m leaving you to experience this place just as we did: with no explanation.

Since I moved home I’ve gone shopping more often than I used to, mainly because I keep running out of clothes to wear while I wait for them to finish drying, and even if I could afford a dryer I wouldn’t have a place to put it. This was one such time. I always look significantly better put together on laundry day, because when I have things to choose from, I always choose the same stuff. And I like that stuff! So on Saturday, while I was waiting for my jeans to dry, I scavenged around my closet for something to wear under my new shiny green coat — a gift from a friend — and go find myself a new pair of jeans, and shoot an interesting outfit while I was at it, since me wearing interesting outfits is such a rare occurrence.

It was cold and rushed and while I was editing the photos, I kept rumbling, “I can’t believe I wore tights for this.” But that’s week 1 of 52 self-portraits complete! (I haven’t picked the One yet. Possibly the one above?) And the coat is awesome, shopping was quite successful, and my jeans were dry when I came back.

It’s possible, however, that I lost the tights and the hairdo around Zara, and walked around in mismatched socks and bare legs in the middle of winter for about an hour. You guys, tights suck. Why do they have to look good?

Is this global warming? Is it just weird out there? Some may know, but I am not one of them.

It’s not like it’s summer hot outside, but it’s warm enough to prance around without a coat on at 5 in the afternoon, and that’s a little weird. I remember this time in late December or very early January a couple of years back when I tried to shoot a knit dress under my coat, and not only did the pictures come out blue (I hadn’t learned about white balance at the time) but I pretty much decided then and there that I wasn’t putting on another dress until April at the earliest. I kept that promise.

It was around that time that I accepted I couldn’t stand tights no matter how good they looked, so it wasn’t all that hard.

I’ve become pretty good at shopping for myself — you would think you’re born with that skill, but it took me many years to figure out how I worked, clothes-wise, and these days I get a ton of use out of everything I buy. Half this outfit was bought on Oxford Street back in September — I’m wearing the gorgeous booties I splurged on as well as half my Primark purchases: sweater, and not pictured: long-sleeve tee, bra, two pairs of socks.

The jeans were the only (kinda) flare, (kinda) thick jeans I could find in town, because all anyone ever sells anymore is skinny jeans that are so thin they’re more like leggings and I bloody hate leggings and if I wanted to wear leggings, I would not wear jeans! Why is this a thing? I had a browse online before going to a few stores and ended up buying the exact same jeans I’d found on the Zara website. Even the store itself has changed and is weirdly disappointing now? But at least the jeans are good.

And so: a post featuring an outfit I wear roughly once a week. Comfy stuff.

Lounging at the mini pool on the roof terrace at the Vincci Bit in Barcelona, or quickly slapping on a pair of heels and sunnies, getting the elevator up, taking the pictures and running so my best friend could catch her bus. Nobody has to know which these are. But these are the latter.

The weather wasn’t even that great to enjoy the roof terrace, which was sad, but if that’s all the pool they had in mind, meh. How about the beach five minutes down the street instead? Mm the beach.

I rarely wear sunglasses, but I’m obsessed with these Twiggy frames from SpecsPost. I think I tried cat’s eye glasses once when I bought my first pair, but the shops in town mostly carried stuff that was way too big on me so I looked terrible. These aren’t petite, but they’re on the smaller size, and when I put them on I felt that feeling I rarely get anymore where something just fucking fits. They didn’t just look right; they looked good and made me look good.

I am a cat’s eye convert. Unfortunately sunglasses aren’t really my thing — I look at these photos and I’m torn between “damn I’m hot” and “damn I look like an asshole who is also hot” — so I’m hoping I can get a pair of these same frames with standard lenses sometime, because I truly love how they look on me.

The shorts are from ASOS and the shirt I bought on a last-minute Sunday run at Maremagnum right there in Barcelona because I packed like shit and had nothing to wear on Monday unless I bought it. Maremagnum is a big mall and the only thing I could find that was open on a Sunday (it is Spain, after all), and it is situated on a pier of sorts, so basically I got to see the port and a whole lot of sea at night, which was impossible to capture well on my camera, but which I enjoyed immensely.

This is a little wave hello since I won’t be posting much until the new year — I could, but the blogging world is dead. I have no interest in screaming into a void. I’d rather schedule posts for busier times, and I am doing that.

I like to pretend my outfits are worthy of jazz standard lyrics. Let me have this one.

I also like to think if I saw this post on my feed, I wouldn’t bother to read anything written alongside it and would instead just look at the photos. I’m proud of them; there’s room for improvement, but I had a great deal of fun shooting with my best friend, and I think I look quite lovely considering… various things I shall not draw attention to. This is a cheap dress, and it has pockets (!), and the only makeup I’m wearing is drugstore lipstick. I carried my heels in a bag and they barely show up in any pictures.

In short(er): red is a lovely color, and Barcelona is an interesting place.